Amazon Doesn't Play Well With Others, Bans Sale of Apple TV and Chromecast

By the end of October, Amazon.com will stop selling media-streaming devices from Google and Apple that “aren’t compatible” with its own streaming service, Prime Video.

In an email sent to its marketplace sellers, Amazon explained that Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast don’t “interact well” with Prime, and that the company wants to avoid “customer confusion” by offering them for sale. Amazon’s Fire TV stick, the company’s own streaming dongle, is its best-selling electronic device.

Streaming devices that do work well with Prime—such as Roku’s set-top device, and Microsoft’s Xbox—will continue to be available from the online retailer. According to Bloomberg Business, though, fewer than 20 percent of Amazon customers are actually Prime members.

This sort of behavior is not a first for Amazon, which just last year shut out Hachette Book Group over a dispute regarding print and digital book sales. The company blocked pre-orders for some of Hachette’s books, which rankled the feathers of many authors, who accused Amazon of using anti-competitive practices.